She leaned down and kissed him. Blood, gore and all.
When she leaned back, he had a wondering look in his eyes.
“Don’t you dare feel sorry for me, Cin.” His voice vibrated oddly. “You don’t owe me a goddamn thing. So don’t think you have to—”
She shut him up with another kiss. A deeper, more demanding one. “Shut up, you big dork,” she whispered. “You’re bumming me out.”
They stared at each other like they’d never seen each other before. Until the med techs came, and hustled them all away.
Chapter 28
Three months later…
Sean’s fingers scrabbled for the spur of black granite. His numb hands were ragged and torn from days of climbing. Pain thudded in his head. Partly altitude, partly the lingering hematomas in his skull. There was a strange, constant hissing in his ears.
He’d ditched his pain meds. Anticonvulsants, too. He wondered, distantly, what it would be like to have a seizure while clinging to a cliff face.
His chest jerked, mirthlessly. At least it would be quick.
It was just past dawn, but the clouds didn’t let much light down. Shreds of mist floated beneath his dangling feet. He clung like a spider to the bottom of a small overhang, hyperextended, muscles burning. Wind roared in his ears. Pellets of hail pinged at his face.
It was the closest thing to peace of mind that he’d found lately.
He heaved and struggled, supporting his weight on one set of trembling fingertips, then the other. Clawing upwards, hand over hand.
He felt no triumph when he flung his leg over the ledge. He flopped onto his back, stared into the sky, panting. Just blank stasis, and that constant hiss. No more desperate effort to expend. He needed another cliff. Quick, before he started thinking. Or worse, feeling.
He’d been up here for a week, with a bare minimum of survival gear. He hadn’t bothered to bring much food, figuring he could hunt if he got hungry. He had, the first couple days, but the longer he stayed out there in the wilderness, the less interested he was in food.
He’d left behind the cell phone, doctors’ advice, frantic fussing from family. Lectures, pep talks, stern talkings-to. Offhand comments about what Liv was doing, what Liv said, how Liv felt.
How devastated she was that he refused to see her.
He let out his breath in a harsh sigh, trying to exhale the pain that gripped him when he thought of her. Launched into his rationalization for the millionth time. It had dug a groove in his mind.
Nah. More like a fucking trough, at this point.
He’d done what he had to do. He couldn’t bear to look at her, in the condition he was in. He hadn’t been that much of a prize even before Osterman had mind-raped him. Add on the nightmares, the stress flashbacks of torturing her, killing her, and oh, Jesus.
It was a stain on his soul that he couldn’t scrub clean. It scared him out of his wits. His mind shied away in horror from the thought of hurting her.
He couldn’t risk it. Liv was alive and well. Miraculously. That was how she was going to stay. Without him, if necessary. Whatever it took.
Hey, princess, take a chance on me? C’mon. Live dangerously.
Hah. Right. He lifted his hand to the cord around his throat, the tiny leather bag that hung on it, like a totem. The diamond earring.
She’d stuck it in a padded envelope, and mailed it back to him after he refused to see her. No accompanying note. He didn’t blame her.
It was like that scene in the jail, all over again. But far worse.
He put his hand to the buzzed-off hair, the indentations on his skull where they’d opened him up, fucked around in there. He was sure they’d done their best, but he felt like a jerry-rigged pile of shit.
He dragged himself onto his knees. His head spun. Every breath was a knife stab. He staggered up to the crest, and stepped up onto the highest point to look down over the long, curving sweep of gray shale—
The rock tipped, dumped him off. He did a crazy dance trying to scramble onto something solid, but everything was moving, he was—
falling down the rocks, thudding and bouncing, and no way would he make it back up in time to save Liv from T-Rex, he just kept falling, falling, with a terrible unstoppable momentum, past all hope…
He drifted back, some time later, to a vague awareness of cold. He put his hand to his face. Sticky. He wondered if he’d snapped his spine.
The hiss in the back of his head had gotten louder.
He pried his eyes open. Liv stood before him in the shifting mist.
Joy surged in his chest. T-Rex hadn’t killed her. Her hair looked like a dark cloud. His hands ached to touch it.
“Get up, you idiot.” She smiled at him, held out her slender hand.
He scrambled to her feet and seized her, starving to taste those soft lips, drink in her fragrant breath, fill his hands with her warm—
Her eyes froze wide. She made a choked sound, and the color in her cheeks drained away. She sagged, and he caught her. Liv slipped to one side, because he’d only caught her with one hand.
The other hand held the knife he’d just driven into her chest.
Stark horror spread through him like blood from a severed artery.
He lowered her down, but there was no place to put her on the steep slopes, the jagged, sliding rocks. Osterman’s mocking laughter echoed through his head. The hiss became a deafening roar.
He finally recognized it. It was the blowtorch.
He staggered away, his howls swallowed by muffling fog, stumbling over stones, head dangling, sobbing for breath—
Stop it. You dumb ass.
He was so startled, he slipped, and clutched a spur of rock to keep from sliding further. He looked up. It was Kev. The older, scarred, grim-looking Kev with haunted eyes that he’d seen in that freaky vision. Kev’s dimple was forever hidden in the grooves of his unsmiling face.
“Leave me alone,” Sean said dully. “I can’t take any more.”
I see that. You can’t take much of anything.
Sean was stung at the flinty judgment in Kev’s voice. “What would you know about it?” he snapped. “You’re dead. Stop criticizing.”
Kev’s cool expression did not change. So put a gun in your mouth, already, if dead’s what you want. Don’t stage some pussy accident.
“I shouldn’t even talk to you. I’m just encouraging you.” Sean shut his eyes, counted ten firebursts of pain, willing the apparition to be gone when he opened them. Still there. Stubborn pain in the ass.
If you go over the edge, Osterman’s won. Kev’s voice was harsh. He’ll be laughing in hell. You want to be the butt of his joke?
“So what the hell am I supposed to do?” Sean roared.
Kev’s tight mouth barely quirked. The hard thing.
That pissed him off, in a big way. “I am, butthead,” Sean snarled. “What do you think I’m doing up here? Playing with my dick?”
Kev looked unimpressed. Dying is easy. It’s living that’s hard.
That logic struck Sean as dubious, coming from a dead guy, but he didn’t have it in him to argue. He was too fucking miserable.
He buried his head in his arms. Might even have slept for a while.
The sound of his own teeth chattering woke him. The wind had picked up, whipping the thick fog away into fine, transparent shreds.
He blinked, focused…and gasped. His gut yawned with terror.
He was perched on a cliff. One foot dangled over it. One arm. An entire shoulder. He stared, gaping, a thousand feet straight down.
He froze, scared shitless. He’d been flirting with death for a week, but this was the first time that death had made a move.
He didn’t want to die. The realization startled him. It would be all wrong. Broken off, unfinished. So stupid, to die now, after all this effort, all this drama. To never see her again. Never touch her, hear her sweet voice. The fear of that pierced him like a needle of ice.
It took forever to break the sp
ell and creep back from the edge. He rolled onto his face on the jagged rocks, his limbs as weak as water. He fell apart, for the first time since he’d woken out of the coma.
He cried, for all of it. Dad, Kev, Mom. For Liv. For all the pain and fear that Osterman had inflicted on all those poor kids. The loss, the grief, the waste. It thundered through him, on and on until he started to wonder if it would ever stop.
It finally did, leaving him exhausted. Limp as a rag, clinging to the mountaintop under the threatening gray sky.
But when he rolled over, the hissing sound was gone. All he heard was the wind, whistling through the jagged rocks and crags.
He felt light. Clean.
He tried to get up. His legs buckled, dumping him on his ass.
It made him laugh. Ironic, if he died now like a bozo asshole, just because his worthless legs shook too much to bear his weight.
Liv. He braced himself for the pain, but the pain had changed. It was hotter, softer. It was the pain of longing.
It was the sweet ache of dawning hope.
Liv stepped back from the scene she was painting. The last time she’d painted murals for the kid’s section, she’d considered Bluebeard too scary. She was tougher now. Or maybe she was just warped.
Bluebeard’s curious young wife crouched by the iron door of the secret chamber, clutching the key. Liv hadn’t painted the room’s contents, just a crack of utter darkness. Yeah. It was creepy. It worked.
“It looks real nice, honey.”
She jumped into the air at her father’s voice. Her nerves were still shot, after months. She glanced at the painting. Of all words she might have used to describe it, “nice” was not one of them. But hey. Whatever.
“Thanks, Daddy,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
Her father looked around at the dusty chaos of renovation in her bookstore, and turned a manila envelope in his hands.
“Place looks great,” he said, with forced heartiness. “Good job.”
Liv shrugged. “I should be ready for business in a few months.”
A tense silence fell. Her father blinked, shuffled. Cleared his throat. “Have you, ah…have you heard from Sean McCloud?”
Every part of her shrank from the pain that name invoked. She pressed her hand to her aching throat. “No. We’re not together anymore, Dad. Please don’t ever mention his name to me again.”
“Ah. Well. Seems strange, after everything that happened—”
“Yes, but that’s the way things are, so let’s leave it,” she said sharply. “What’s in the envelope?”
He glanced down. “Oh. It’s for you. A courier brought it. I saw him at the door when I was coming in, so I signed for it.”
She held out her hand for it. Waited. “Dad?” she prompted.
He frowned. “I thought I should open it for you. Considering.”
“Oh, stop.” She twitched it out of his hands. “The people who were trying to hurt me are dead. I can open my own damn mail now.”
He shrugged. “Open it, then.”
“In private,” she snapped. “Come on, Daddy. Spit it out. Say whatever she told you to say, but I warn you, I have no intention of—”
“I’m not carrying messages from your mother,” he said abruptly. “I’ve been living in the apartment on Court Street for three weeks now.”
Liv stared at him, dumbfounded. “Oh. Is it—”
“Permanent? Yes.” He could not meet her eyes. “It’s something I guess I should have done long ago. I just didn’t want to wreck anybody’s life. But after what happened, I got to thinking.”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I can see how that might have helped.”
Her father’s face was seamed with lines of regret. “I’m real sorry I didn’t back you up more, honey,” he said gruffly. “All along.”
All along? Now he was sorry? After her life had been gutted? She pushed the bitterness aside with some effort. Gave him a brusque nod.
“I was wondering if you might have dinner with me sometime,” he said tentatively. “If you ever come to the city, that is.”
She stood there, hand over her mouth. Throat still locked.
Her father cleared his throat. “Well, then. I’ll be on my way.”
“Of course we can have dinner,” she burst out. “I’ll call you.”
He gave her a sickly smile, patted her shoulder, and fled. Her father never had been able to handle tears. She didn’t blame him.
She was sick to death of them herself, at this point.
She wiped the tears away with the sleeve of her baggy sweater, and examined the envelope. Just her name, on a computer-generated white label. Her insides clutched. She pushed the feeling away, fiercely.
T-Rex was gone, damn it. Food for worms.
She pried open the flap, and pulled out a handful of drawings.
They were pen and ink, ripped out of a spiral sketchbook. A series of female nudes. Simple, minimalistic, and yet charged with eroticism. They had the offhand grace of an ancient Chinese calligraphy master.
She leafed through them with trembling hands, bewildered. The drawings were unsigned. It was only when she saw the woman’s back that she recognized the subject. That pattern of moles…that was her own back. Those freckles were on her own arm. Her foot, with the mole above the toe that he’d said he wanted to fall to his knees and kiss.
It was like a punch, right to her heart.
She flung the sketches to the ground and burst into furious tears. How dare he come waltzing back, after months, to play incomprehensible games with her head, her heart. How dare he.
That twisted, sadistic bastard.
She dropped to her knees, rifled through the sketches to see if he’d dashed off an explanatory note. Of course not. Nothing so polite or normal. He was, after all, a cryptic, pain-in-the-ass wacko McCloud.
She stomped past the curious glances of the craftsmen, onto the street. She clutched the sweater against the biting wind. No way would Sean make his grand gesture and not hang around to see how she took it. She’d wait ’til he slunk out of the woodwork to take his punishment.
And then. Oh, then. God help the man.
Sean dug his shaking hands deeper into his jeans pockets as he stared past the lemon custard, huckleberry conserve and fudge that crowded the shelves of the Endicott Falls Gift Boutique. He was staring out of the shop window and across the street, at Books & Brew. Liv’s store.
The salesgirls had to wonder how candy and jam could mesmerize him for over an hour. He was so scary, none of them dared ask. He had that Frankenstein look going on, the hospital pallor, the red, nasty scars. All he needed were bolts coming out of his forehead.
He was so scared, his hands were ice cold. His belly churned.
He’d almost given up when he saw Liv’s father sign for the drawings. Old Bart marched out a few minutes later, got into his car and left. All clear.
He’d staked the place out for hours, but he still wasn’t prepared when she came out. His stomach clenched, his heart went nuts, a grassfire spread under the surface of his skin. He stared, hungrily.
Her dark hair whipped in the wind. She was so pale. Way too thin. And she wasn’t wearing a coat, for the love of God. It was blustery and raw out there, but her slender throat was exposed. Most of a shoulder, too. She had only a loose, knee-length sweater around herself.
Maybe the drawings hadn’t worked. He’d hoped to go non-verbal at first, take a detour around arguments. No such luck.
He stumbled out the door to meet his doom. Crossed the street like a sleepwalker. Cars screeched to a halt, beeping indignantly, but he just came blindly on, until he stood before her. As close as he dared.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing here, Sean?” Her voice wobbled. “What sick game are you playing with me now?”
He inhaled. The exhale came out in a series of hiccupping, nervous jerks. “No games,” he said. “I’m throwing myself at your feet.”
She gasped. “Oh, rea
lly. Well. You can just pick yourself up and go throw yourself someplace else. Like the Dumpster. Go away, Sean. I don’t want to see you. Ever. Again. Got it?”
It was what he expected. Less than he deserved. Still, he couldn’t do as she asked. It was not one of the options open to him. He sank down onto his knees. She gasped, and skittered back a few steps.
“What the hell?” She waved her hands at him. “Stop it! Get up!”
Mud seeped through the knees of his jeans. He shook his head.
“I don’t believe it!” Her voice was thin, breathless. “You think I’m so stupid that you can charm me with your clown act? You think I’ll let you stomp on me for the third time? Fuck you, Sean McCloud!”
His jaw clenched, painfully. He shook his head again. “I never meant to do that to you,” he said tightly. “Never. I swear to God.”
Liv put her hand over her mouth. Two tears flashed down over her cheeks. He wanted to catch them. Feel their heat. Taste their salt.
She groped for her pocket, but the sweater thing didn’t have one. “Oh, shit,” she mumbled snappishly. “It never fails.”
He reached into the pocket of his shearling coat and pulled out a packet of tissues. He presented them to her with a solemn flourish.
She snatched them out of his hand, pried one out and blew into it. “Get up, you melodramatic jerk. I’m not playing your games.”
“I’m not leaving until you let me talk to you,” he said quietly.
“You’ll be kneeling in the mud for a very long time,” she warned.
“You’ll have fun explaining that one to the Chamber of Commerce,” he pointed out.
Her eyes blazed with fury. “You smart-assed son of a bitch.”
“Sorry,” he said meekly. Shit. He had to muzzle the flip remarks.
The boutique door tinkled. “Um, Liv?” a nervous girl’s voice inquired. “Is everything OK? Should I, like, call somebody?”
“Thanks, Polly. I’m fine,” Liv said coolly.
Sean swiveled his head. Polly was regarding him as if he were a slavering wild beast. “Um…you’re absolutely sure?” she squeaked.
“I’m sure.” Liv honked angrily into her tissue. “Get up,” she hissed at him. “You might as well come inside. The sooner you say your piece, the sooner it’ll be over and done. I have things to do.”
Edge Of Midnight (The Mccloud Series Book 4) Page 42
